Who To Blame In Romeo And Juliet

The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is a very complicated one. A series of initially independent events interrupt one another, making it fairly difficult to place blame on one person. So, we should take a look at the instigators of each event to determine who is to blame. The initial events are the fight caused by Sampson, Gregory, Abraham, and BAlthasar which reignite the family feud, Romeo falling in love and marrying Juliet, and Lord Capulet arranging Paris’ and Juliet’s marriage. With this list of people we can determine who is to blame. The first event was the fight between the servants of both families. This started a fresh and new hate between the two families, which can be seen when Lord Capulet and Lord Montague enter the scene. Lord Montague says “Thou villain Montague!” (pg 23) when they see each other, and both lords try to fight each other. This meant that Romeo and Juliet would have to start hiding their love, which leads to other events that end in their
They each contributed to the problem in some way. The prince says “Capulet, Montague, see what a scourge is laid upon your hate,” (pg 130) implying that the fault lays in the feud. However, the servants reigniting the feud, Juliet and especially Romeo rushing their love, Lord Capulet’s stubbornness, Friar Lawrence’s needlessly complicated plan, and many other characters’ flaws are all to blame. Some have varying extents of blame, for example even though Romeo and Juliet rushed their love, teenage hormones are a reasonable excuse for this so some of the blame can be alleviated from them. Whereas the feud between the two families is the obstacle that made Romeo and Juliet’s love complicated to begin with, which puts more of the blame on the heads of the households. But in general, everyone can be said to have some amount of blame for the death of Romeo and